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Tuesday, July 22, 2025

Crime will topple Government, says Rowley

by

20140108

Don't be hood­winked by the Gov­ern­ment's at­tempt to lessen the sever­i­ty of the in­creased crime rate when it blames gangs, says Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley.Speak­ing at a meet­ing on Mon­day night at City Hall, Port-of-Spain, to pro­mote him­self as the leader of the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) for the par­ty's up­com­ing in­ter­nal elec­tion, Row­ley said if changes were not made at the high­est lev­el, the coun­try would not be able to evade the dif­fi­cul­ties which lay ahead.

He said the Gov­ern­ment and its agen­cies were try­ing to con­vince cit­i­zens every­thing was fine, yet up to the sixth day of 2014, there had al­ready been 16 mur­ders."What you ex­pect them to say?" he asked rhetor­i­cal­ly."I can't re­call any time in this coun­try a blood­bath tak­ing place like this week," he added.He con­ced­ed the PNM lost the gen­er­al elec­tion in 2010 "bad­ly," at­tribut­ing it to spi­ralling crime."The main is­sue was the PNM's fail­ure to re­duce the vi­o­lent crime," he said.

How­ev­er, Row­ley com­ment­ed on the crime rate and the in­ef­fec­tu­al mea­sures by the present Gov­ern­ment, say­ing the on­ly way to ad­dress the is­sue was to change the Gov­ern­ment.He said as mur­ders piled up for 2014, there was si­lence from Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and an at­tempt to blame gangs for the spike in killings."We are hav­ing a dis­ag­gre­ga­tion of mur­ders. To­day we are be­ing told 'cit­i­zens, don't wor­ry, it is gang peo­ple killing one an­oth­er. That is not re­al mur­der.'"

He said it was an at­tempt to change the num­ber of mur­ders in­to one that would be more ac­cept­able if the pub­lic con­sid­ered it gang war­fare."So we are now dis­ag­gre­gat­ing the prob­lem in­to ac­cept­able parts and un­ac­cept­able parts. We call that fail­ure," he added.He told the crowd they were "vir­tu­al­ly vot­ing to save your life."Row­ley ad­dressed the state of so­cial ser­vices and PNM's pol­i­cy when it was in gov­ern­ment."There will be rad­i­cal re­form of the so­cial sup­port ser­vices," he said, which pleased the au­di­ence, who ap­plaud­ed in sup­port.

He said his gov­ern­ment in­tend­ed to en­sure the re­sources meant for so­cial sup­port reached the right peo­ple."It will elim­i­nate waste and cor­rup­tion," he added.Row­ley al­so com­ment­ed on the oil spill in south­west­ern Trinidad, de­scrib­ing it as an eco­log­i­cal cri­sis.He dis­missed Petrotrin's $8 mil­lion es­ti­mate for dam­age be­cause the com­pa­ny had not re­al­ly start­ed to check the cost as yet.

"Peo­ple's lives are be­ing de­stroyed... and they are telling lies... every day is a dif­fer­ent lie that we are sup­posed to ac­cept."Row­ley said the change for the coun­try had to come from the top.


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